The End (kinda…)

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Last Updated on July 29, 2024 by Amy

It was over 10 years ago that I sat down and wrote the first post on the Out Chasing Stars blog. I can still vividly remember hesitating and re-writing the words over and over again. Committing to starting a blog and publishing that post for others to see felt like it would take our dream of sailing around the world and start to make it very real. It’s funny how history has a tendency to repeat itself.

I’ve started and stopped this post many times, because it’s so hard and yet so simple to say: we have officially sold Starry Horizons.

The Why

The last 10 years of sailing around the world, seeing some of the most amazing sights on the planet and sharing them with friends has been rewarding beyond measure. We’ve met many people who, once they threw off the bowlines, intended to sail forever. Yet that was never our plan.

We originally started off with the goal of circumnavigating. And on March 26th, 2020 we officially crossed our wake as we sailed into Antigua. The last year or so of the circumnavigation had been hard. Lots of miles sailed in some tough conditions (looking at you Indian Ocean and South Africa) and the cancellation of a long anticipated circumnavigation party with family and friends due to COVID tainted something we’d dreamed about for so long.

After the circumnavigation, we weren’t quite sure what to do next. The dream had been fulfilled, but neither of us were quite ready to move back to land. The constant “on the move” requirements of another circumnavigation didn’t feel very appealing, so we decided to stay closer to home and sail the East Coast during hurricane season and then spend the cruising season in the Bahamas or the Caribbean.

This turned out to be a nice solution, for a while. We enjoyed a slower pace to cruising life and didn’t feel guilty if we wanted to stay in one place for 3 months because it was so beautiful. It gave us opportunities to re-fit Starry Horizons in a much more energy efficient and sustainable way and incorporate lots of the knowledge we’d accumulated over the years. Starlink revolutionized communications and enabled us to start businesses we really enjoy and are really excited about. Amy could continue writing romance novels under the pen name Liz Alden and I launched a startup called MaintenanceROS devoted to helping boat owners identify and track maintenance.

But as time went on, it became clear to us that the compromises required with living a life on a boat were holding us back from doing the other things we wanted.

There were essentially three things we’d run across and I’ll do my best to touch on them somewhat briefly:

Passage Making

Planning passages and identifying good weather windows are an essential part of cruising. But I’ve always found that process to be stressful. Amy had a lot of faith in me and while I knew that the boat could handle just about anything, it was a weighty responsibility.

The staying close to home plan was a good one, but the truth is that sailing up and down the East Coast is no joke. Our preference for long passages meant we had to account for navigating the Gulf Stream and deal with weather windows that rarely stay open long. On the passage from the Chesapeake to Georgetown, Bahamas last year, what looked like a really nice window turned into the first time we ever hove to for weather when the wind shifted 360 degrees around us and things got very uncomfortable.

Travel Limitations

I realize how crazy this one may sound, but sailing on a boat can be somewhat limiting in terms of the travel you can do. Yes, you can hop from island to island and country to country, but figuring out how to explore the interior of a country and leave the boat somewhere is a very real challenge.

After almost 10 years of the cruisers style of traveling, we wanted to start do some traveling in a different way. Things like seeing the Northern Lights and visiting friends around the world who’d come to stay on SH with us took on greater importance.

Business Compromises

More and more people are working remotely these days but it is not without tradeoffs. Time spent working on the business would mean less time exploring the beautiful areas we found ourselves in. And conversely, the considerable time spent working on the boat with the re-fit and fixing teething issues, or having to move the boat due to incoming weather, meant less time to work on our businesses. And in the small start up phase that we are both in, the amount of time devoted to the business was pretty directly correlated to their growth/success.

It felt like we were sacrificing a lot of the things we enjoyed about boating life and being entrepreneurs without getting equal benefits in return.

The Process

After the particularly rough passage down to the Bahamas last year, Amy and I started having some discussions about if the time had finally come for us to evaluate selling Starry Horizons.

And as if the universe was trying to speak to us, that week we had someone reach out to us asking if we knew of any Fountaine Pajot Helias for sale. Those queries had been quite common over the years, usually inquiring about Starry Horizons, but this was the first time we were seriously considering it.

There were the initial details to work out.

What timeline were the buyers looking for? A summer sale and handover would work well for both parties. They were wrapping up work and moving towards retirement and we wanted to enjoy one last cruising season.

Could we agree on a price? It was easy to look up other Helias on the market and we had access to actual sales data. But Starry Horizons was perhaps one of the most customized Helias in the world. Fortunately, the buyers also valued the changes we’d made and we found a price that I think was a good deal for both parties.

Where should we do the handover? The Chesapeake offered a good compromise of yards that could haul for a survey and being located north of almost any insurance hurricane zones.

The initial process took a couple months of back and forth questions, video tours and answering one big issue: what would we actually need to do to transfer ownership of the boat?

Normally when selling a boat, the seller would list a boat with a broker and the broker would help find a buyer and then handle all of those ownership transfer details. We’ve had several friends who’ve gone through this process and found the expertise and services well worth the cost.

We were in the unique position of having “found” a buyer directly and that meant we could likely save the cost of a broker if we could agree on an alternative method.

Enter CatamaranSite.

They, in combination with their partners, offered everything we needed, including full contract management, escrow and documentation services. Richard was very responsive and helpful throughout the process, answering lots of questions and making sure both parties were comfortable. It was the perfect solution for us and made everything go much smoother than we thought possible.

Once the purchase agreement was executed, we enjoyed the rest of our Bahamas season. We knew that our lives would be changing drastically but did our best to make sure we enjoyed the time we had left with Starry Horizons.

Upon our arrival into the Chesapeake we settled into a marina and bought a car. Friends came for a final visit and we did lots of last projects and organizing in preparation for the survey and handover. Starry Horizons passed the survey with flying colors, the new owners flew in and we all celebrated the transition with a bottle of champagne!

What Comes Next?

At the moment, we’re back in Texas after a nice road trip and are spending some long overdue time with family. We’ll leave soon on that Europe trip we’d been wanting to take and are excited about seeing friends and places that have been at the top of our land based wish list for a while.

It’s the long term that’s still a bit of an unknown. What is known is that travel will remain an important part of our lives. The world is too big and amazing not to continue exploring it.

We’d never say never to another boat some day but for the time being we definitely want to settle somewhere and put down roots. We’ve met so many incredible people while sailing but the transitory nature of the lifestyle can get frustrating after a while. Many discussions have been had about what characteristics make up the ideal place for us to live and an extensive amount of Googling and talking to friends have helped create a list of possibilities.

Having dedicated offices where we can spend uninterrupted time on our businesses is probably more exciting than it should be. MaintenanceROS will be a good way for me to stay involved with the marine industry and Amy is full steam ahead writing and publishing more books.

When we get back from Europe, the plan is to take our time and stay in some of those places for a while so we can get a true feel for them. It’s an interesting, and extremely fortunate, challenge to have: where would you live if you could choose anywhere?

However, that’s a problem for future us.

For now, we’re enjoying hearing updates from the new owners as they sail north for the summer. Leaving the boat that was such a good home and partner in our adventures was definitely emotional. But we’re so happy that she gets to see the world anew through a fresh set of eyes and have all sorts of new experiences with owners that care deeply for her.

Thank you so much for all the love and support over the years. Posts on the blog will likely be few and far between but we’ll keep popping up on Facebook and Instagram a bit more regularly. One thing we can promise… we’ll definitely keep chasing those stars.